By any reasonable measure, the age of the dog-eared guidebook and the paper boarding pass has quietly slipped into history. Today’s traveller moves through the world by smartphone, swiping and tapping from the first hopeful group chat about a getaway to the final taxi ride home. The expectation is no longer to travel—it is to travel seamlessly, personally, and with minimal friction.
Behind this quiet revolution sits a piece of global infrastructure most passengers never see: Information Technology and Business Process Management, or IT-BPM. Once the dull engine room of operations, it is now the digital spine of modern travel.
Richard Valente, Vice President of Customer Experience Strategy at TP in Australia, sees this transformation up close every day. His assessment is blunt and accurate: the future of travel is being rebuilt, line by digital line.
“The pandemic didn’t just disrupt travel it rebooted it,” Valente says. “Customers suddenly needed instant answers, refunds, reassurance and flexibility, all at once. Traditional systems simply couldn’t cope.”
From grounded fleets to digital acceleration
COVID-19 grounded aircraft and emptied hotels worldwide, but it also forced an unprecedented acceleration in digital capability. Airlines, cruise operators, hotels and online booking platforms had no luxury of a gradual transition. They had to modernise instantly or collapse under the weight of demand.
IT-BPM outsourcing became the critical stabiliser. Automated rebooking systems, intelligent self-service portals and AI-powered customer support moved from “nice to have” to operational necessity almost overnight.
What emerged was a new kind of travel operations model, one that is agile, data-driven and built around real-time response. In Valente’s words, “It allowed the industry to go from firefighting to forward planning.”
The rise of hyper-personalised travel
If there is one profound shift in traveller behaviour over the past five years, it is this: people no longer tolerate generic service. One-size-fits-all is dead. Personalisation is now the price of entry.
Through advanced Customer Experience Management systems, travel brands are now connecting customer acquisition, service delivery and loyalty into a single intelligent ecosystem. At the centre of this ecosystem sit Customer Relationship Management platforms, predictive analytics and AI-driven insights capable of anticipating needs before they are spoken.
Consider the now increasingly common scenario of a delayed connecting flight. In the past, the traveller had to queue. Today, the traveller is automatically pushed a hotel voucher, a lounge pass, or a loyalty upgrade, often before they reach the gate. It feels effortless because, behind the scenes, it is anything but.
CX service providers synchronise sprawling data sets across airlines, accommodation providers, loyalty programs and logistics networks, aligning them around a single customer journey. The technology is complex. The outcome is beautifully simple.
High-Tech meets High-Touch
With so much automation now in play, there is a persistent fear that travel is becoming sterile. The evidence suggests the opposite.
The most trusted brands are those that master the balance between High-Tech and High-Touch. AI handles the routine with relentless efficiency. Humans hold the moments that matter.
Technology now quietly clears the back-office burden: ticket changes, payment processing, identity verification, document handling. That frees customer service specialists to focus where empathy cannot be coded, helping anxious families rebook missed holidays, calming stranded travellers, and salvaging once-in-a-lifetime trips.
Automation speeds up the system. Humanity preserves the brand.
Valente is unequivocal on this point: “Technology should never replace empathy. It should protect it.”
Efficiency with a conscience
The digital transformation of travel is not just rewriting service standards—it is reshaping sustainability.
Process digitisation has dramatically reduced paper use across the industry. Digital boarding passes alone have eliminated millions of printed documents annually. AI-enabled route optimisation reduces fuel burn. More innovative logistics shrinks operational waste.
What once seemed like separate priorities, efficiency and sustainability, are now marching in step. The green dividend, it turns out, is good business.
Outsourcing as strategic infrastructure
Outsourcing was once treated as a cost-cutting exercise. Today it has matured into strategic infrastructure.
IT-BPM providers now act as embedded partners within travel organisations, managing complex CX ecosystems at scale. They absorb volatility during disruption events, maintain service levels during peak travel seasons and deliver innovation that would be difficult to build internally.
The advantage is not merely operational; it is competitive. Brands that can scale services intelligently can invest more aggressively in customer loyalty, product innovation, and market expansion.
A new era of proactive travel design
The travel industry is now shifting from reactive problem-solving to proactive experience design. The distinction matters.
Previously, systems responded when something broke. Today, systems increasingly intervene before failure occurs. Early-warning analytics predict disruption. Intelligent workflows trigger preventative action. Customers enjoy the illusion of smooth sailing because the heavy work has already been done in the background.
This is experience design at its most sophisticated: data-driven, anticipatory and almost invisible.
The road ahead
The next phase of travel will not be defined solely by where people go, but by how intelligently their journeys are shaped along the way.
Artificial intelligence, predictive analytics and global CX orchestration will continue to collapse friction points that were once accepted as “just part of travel.” The winners will be those who can integrate data, technology and human empathy at an industrial scale.
Customer expectations will not soften. If anything, they will sharpen. Personalisation will deepen. Response times will shorten. Loyalty will become more conditional.
Yet amid all the circuitry and code, the central truth remains refreshingly old-fashioned: people remember how a journey made them feel.
And that, ultimately, is why IT-BPM and Customer Experience Management now sit at the heart of modern travel. The silicon drives the system. The human touch still carries the memory.
Wherever travellers go next, the best journeys will remain the ones that feel personal, seamless and unmistakably human.
By Sandra Jones – (c) 2025
Read Time: 6 minutes.
About the Writer
Sandra has spent much of her working life untangling the world for others, one itinerary, one dream, one frazzled traveller at a time. With years spent in some of Australia’s best-known travel agencies, she’s the calm voice on the line when flights go missing, luggage takes its own holiday, or someone decides to “see Europe properly” in nine days.
A qualified travel consultant with a knack for making sense of chaos, Sandra fine-tuned her skills through a specialised advisory course, the sort that teaches both knowledge and patience in equal measure. But the storyteller in her was never far away. A later foray into writing gave her the perfect excuse to blend that industry wisdom with her gift for words.
Now, through Global Travel Media, Sandra shares the small truths of travel, its frustrations, laughter, and quiet moments that make every journey worth the fuss.
